"But--but--how awful! And you mean I'll have headaches and things always
because I'm a woman?"

"Because you're a woman and, to quote your Professor, biologically
important. Important to the race, that is--not intrinsically important.
To keep you out of dangers and hardships--and mischief," he said,
chuckling as he watched her indignant face.

"Well, then I won't be a woman! Coddled! I never heard anything so
disgusting! Doctor, I'm going to be a Siegfried, a John the Baptist!
I'm going to be a man!"

The doctor laughed loudly and told her to wait awhile, when she would
laugh at this Marcella who was so eager, so impatient now.




CHAPTER V


That conversation marked an epoch for Marcella. To use the doctor's
phrase, it made her shake hands with her body. His medicine cured the
neuralgia, though it would probably have cured itself now that the
strain of her father's illness was over. But the headaches persisted
right on until the springtime, bringing gusts of impatience and strange
demands and urgencies that made her begin to get tired of the farm and
Lashnagar and set her feet longing to be away on strange roads.